Intel's upcoming 'Wildcat Lake' low-power series breaks cover in Geekbench listing — 'Core 3 304' is twice as fast in single-core performance versus last-gen

Intel has been working on its Wildcat Lake family of budget CPUs for a while now; we've had leaks since at least late 2024 teasing a proper next-gen successor to Twin Lake. The launch of Panther Lake has recently reignited the Wildcat Lake rumor mill. As such, leaker @harukaze5719 has just spotted a new Geekbench listing for an Intel "Core 3 304," and it's quite impressive for its class.

The Core 3 304 scored 2,472 points in the single-core test and 6,708 points in the multi-core test — both of those are huge improvements over its predecessor, the Twin Lake-based N355. That chip isn't on Geekbench's processor benchmarks list, but you can search for it manually to find single-core scores averaging around 1,100 to 1,200 points. That means the Core 3 304 is already doubling that.

Moreover, the single-core numbers match AMD's Ryzen AI 9 365 and Intel's own Core Ultra 7 255H, both of which are more power-hungry chips aimed at high-end laptops. The Core 3 304 is, in fact, as powerful as the desktop Core i5-12600K from a few years ago, at least in Geekbench. On the other hand, the N355 scores around 4,500 multi-core points on average, so the Core 3 304 is roughly 50% faster than its predecessor in that department, too.

As for the specs of the CPU, we're looking at a six-core (2P + 4LPE) config, which is the only one Wildcat Lake has, but the Geekbench listing is reporting 1P + 4LPE across the two clusters, meaning one of the performance cores is disabled. It's an early engineering sample after all, so take all these numbers with a grain of salt; with an extra P-core in the mix, the thermal demands will change the performance equation.

Speaking of which, these Wildcat Lake processors are aimed at the ultra-budget market where efficiency is key. Think Chromebooks, mini-PCs, NAS, etc. For years, Intel has stayed on its Alder Lake platform (Twin Lake is just a refresh) for this category, so they've only had Gracemont E-cores for the past two generations. Wildcat Lake is expected to be the first to introduce Cougar Cove P-cores and pair them with Darkmont Low Power E-cores to provide a significant performance bump.

That performance bump will come with power demands, however, as Wildcat Lake is apparently rated for only 15W, whereas Alder Lake-N and Twin Lake were between 9-15W. The TDP is what separates these bottom-tier Core Ultra 300 series chips — the Core 3 310 and Core 5 320 that were leaked a few days ago, too — as they seem to have identical specs to the "Ultra" branded Core Ultra 5 322 and 332 CPUs.

The Geekbench listing for the Core 3 304 confirmed its base frequency is 1.5 GHz, and it can boost up to 4.3 GHz, which is just 100 MHz lower than the lowest-end Core Ultra 5 SKU in Panther Lake. We don't see it on the Geekbench page, but we know that Wildcat Lake is expected to feature 2 Xe3 cores, which means basic integrated graphics support but still a huge leap over "Intel UHD" graphics in prior generations.

All in all, Wildcat Lake is shaping up to be a potent release for the value-oriented consumer, especially during a global component crisis. The exact release date for these chips is unknown at the moment, but we should be seeing them soon, given how much they've been popping up lately. Initial leaks from back in the day actually pointed to a 2025 release, but that was when Panther Lake was also expected in 2025.

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